How to get entered text from a textbox in Selenium

Question

I enter a value in TextBox or a Combobox, and would like to retrieve the value I have just entered. I see that Selenium Weblement method getText() doesn't retrieve the value, it seems the entered text doesn't get pushed into DOM.

Any solutions?

Solution

The getText() method is for retrieving a text node between element tags for example:

<p>Something</p>

getText() will return "Something"

In a textbox typed text goes into the value attribute so you can try something like:

findElement(By.id("someid")).getAttribute("value");

ComboBox is a bit different. But if you're using the Select object you can use the method:

Select selectItem = new Select(findElement(By.id("someid")));
selectItem.getFirstSelectedOption().getText();

Comments

[Fazy]

Thanks bob, it works as expected. Why using Firebug the entered text is not getting updated in the value attribute ?

[TK Tang]

Just to be clear, it has be to getAttribute("value"), lower case. Not "Value". Which is what i got wrong.

[mlhDev]

I do not see that function, do you have documentation on it?